The New Assisted Reproductive Technology Act in Queensland

The introduction of the Assisted Reproductive Technology Act in Queensland marks a significant milestone in the landscape of reproductive rights and donor conception. As someone personally invested in this journey through surrogacy and egg donation, the implications of this legislation resonate deeply. In this video, Award Winning Surrogacy Lawyer, Stephen Page discusses the new Assisted Reproductive Technology Act in Queensland.

Transcript

Good day, I’m Stephen Page from Page Provan Family and Fertility Lawyers, and I’m talking about the passage of the recent Assisted Reproductive Technology Act in Queensland. I was fortunate to sit in the public gallery during the debate on the Bill in September. And there was a small group of us who were there. I’m a dad through surrogacy and known egg donation, as well as being a lawyer in this space. And it was interesting talking to others who were there when we had breaks, and they were either parents of donor-conceived people or donor-conceived people. And what was most telling to me was that many of them did not know, for the donor-conceived people, where they’d come from, or if their kids were donor-conceived people, who the donors were. And that sense of emptiness and wanting to know. And one of the features about the Assisted Reproductive Technology Act is that there will be a donor conception information register, so a central registry, run in Queensland by the Registrar of Birth, Deaths, and Marriages, and likely be set up in 2026. That will have retrospective transparency back to the beginning of time since donations started in the late ’70s.

And if the records are up to speed, and some of those, certainly early ones, won’t be because they’ll be handwritten by doctors, not even thinking that there’d be anything like this now, but they’ll be able to find out where they’ve come from, or at least have some answers. During the course of the debate, there were about 60 school kids who passed through, looking at Parliament and having that semi-bored, sometimes interested, sometimes asleep type of approach. I looked at them and I thought, well, about one in 17 children currently being born in Australia, born through some assisted reproductive treatment. And that means all that group of 60, if it’s representative, three of those children will have been born through that, through ART of some kind. The Act, which also covers licencing of IVF clinics in Queensland and regulating posthumous use, making it easier in Queensland, commenced on the 19th of September. So the day that I’m recording this is day 13 since the Act commenced. And only some parts of the Act have commenced, and some parts haven’t. What was extraordinary to me was the day after the Act commenced, I gave my first advice about the Act, not about the Bill, but about the Act, because it already started and I needed to give advice.

And on day 11, two days ago, I gave advice and enabled the first posthumous retrieval under the Assisted Reproductive Technology Act. And what was intended by the ART team, review team of Queensland Health, when they were looking at that part of the Act, was to make it easier than the earlier processes under the Transplantation and Anatomy Act. Widows, because they’re primarily widows, shouldn’t have too many barriers to enable them to retrieve the sperm of their unresponsive or dead husbands. And what was borne out two days ago was it’s easier. There are still barriers in place, and rightfully so, but it is certainly an easier procedure than it was. What I found two days ago was that I had to, in essence, teach the IVF clinic and the morgue that the law had changed only just over a week before, and here were the new procedures under the new Act, and here are the consents that are required. It all worked. The retrieval occurred. I don’t know yet whether there was viable sperm. So, there are certain parts of the Act that have not commenced. And for example, posthumous use, that provision has not yet commenced. That’ll probably be sometime in 2025. The licencing of IVF clinics, subject to the state election, which is in about a month’s time, that will be scheduled at this stage in September 25, and the register to commence in 2026.

I’m Stephen Page from Page Provan Family and Fertility Lawyers.

Thank you for watching.